2017 Season in Photos

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Tim H
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Re: 2017 Season in Photos

Unread postby Tim H » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:04 pm

Awesome season! Congrats on your success and thanks for sharing! It was a really great read!


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Mario
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Re: 2017 Season in Photos

Unread postby Mario » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:44 pm

Thanks for writing this up Joe! I enjoy the tactics sprinkled into the story line. That's a nice set of deer, and critters for the year. Curious on your morning sets in the hills how early you are traveling and getting into stand? I assume your sitting up on the fly. Are you using a tree saddle or a hang on with sticks? What factors put you on these hill beds in the morning versus night? Is it your approach and taking advantage of thermals?

thanks!
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Re: 2017 Season in Photos

Unread postby MikePerry » Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:09 pm

Awesome!
Persistence pays!!!
JoeRE
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Re: 2017 Season in Photos

Unread postby JoeRE » Tue Jan 23, 2018 3:27 am

mt008 wrote:Thanks for writing this up Joe! I enjoy the tactics sprinkled into the story line. That's a nice set of deer, and critters for the year. Curious on your morning sets in the hills how early you are traveling and getting into stand? I assume your sitting up on the fly. Are you using a tree saddle or a hang on with sticks? What factors put you on these hill beds in the morning versus night? Is it your approach and taking advantage of thermals?

thanks!


I have spent a lot of time thinking about morning versus evening bed hunts and what I do versus what most other hunters seem to favor. General consensus is evening sits are better. In my experience, mornings have been better. I am pretty sure the biggest reason for these differences is deer densities. Where I hunt in Iowa, its incredibly hard to approach most buck bedding without blowing deer out on the way in. If I bump deer down a ridge line, it usually clears out the whole ridge. Now, there are ways around that, if its windy or rainy that helps a ton getting in undetected. So does early season foilage. But overall, thats why I typically favor morning hunts. 2/3 of the spots I pick for bed setups I don't think I can get into in the evening.

On top of that, often the bedding I am hunting is in a corner of public land, or even across the fence and I am just hunting the travel route. It would be easier if I was hunting huge blocks of public land but Iowa doesn't have much of that. Even 1000 acres isn't that big when you discard 80% of it for having too much human intrusion.

Do I bump deer out of the bed in the morning? Yep. But it seems to be less often than I would if I tried to get close in the evening with every set up. I am also very picky about my morning hunts. I want good conditions for the spot. Early season I prefer cold fronts. Pre-rut helps keep bucks on thier feet a little longer but I also want the right conditions. I avoid stangnant weather. My buddy's buck this year was killed in a low setup that was sheltered from the cold hard wind. My late season buck was killed in the morning on a sunny southerly exposure on a frigid day. Of course its a lot easier to stay 200 yards back and pick one off with a gun. Regardless, conditions concentrate deer in certain areas I am certain of that.

For my hunts morning or evening I use a saddle. When I'm not hunting on the ground anyway- that's been discussed elsewhere. I haven't packed in a stand anywhere for 2 or 3 seasons now. In the evening, I do sometimes go in and pick a tree. For a morning hunt I pretty much always have a tree picked out (shot with GPS) ahead of time from scouting. I have very little confidence in picking a good kill tree in the dark...some guys have pulled that off and wow, hats off to them. Every time I have tried that, was a disaster.

My access is often right in through bedding in the morning. I don't care about the ground scent much, that is the beauty of hunting completely mobile and not planning on coming back - at least for quite a while. We all need to prioritize what we worry about, and it helps me to cross that off my list. I often come in from below, and yes that keeps falling thermals in my favor. Really though the #1 rule is come in where the deer aren't. So in the morning I avoid food and travel routes close to food. Might be high might be low. I try to stay on the downwind side of those areas too, or at least just several hundred yards away. I have passed by fields of deer 300 yards away downwind and not seemed to have problems with it. If I know that is happening usually I move fast past there. I think in farm country that is easier to do. In big woods where human scent is more foreign, thats a bigger no-no. I am learning that as I slowly gain experience hunting in northern WI...

I used to be one of those guys who would climb up 2-3 hrs before daylight to be on the safe side. Then I had kids and every minute of sleep is a blessing :lol: So the last 2-3 season I usually come in just before daylight. Sometimes even grey light. Its that, or not hunt that morning. And guess what - I haven't seen a difference in success! My theory is depending on location and buck, some will be browsing around their beds far before daylight. You will blow them out regardless in the morning. All others seem to move into the area of their day beds after full daylight. There doesn't seem to be much in between - they are there either hours before daylight, or around sunup or after that. Another thing that helps is when you know food sources, or does, are a distance from the bedding. Longer travel routes do seem to help morning bed hunts - as long as there isn't a ton of hunting pressure close to the bed obviously.

If I don't think there is a chance to get close to the bed in the evening, and I have a 50/50 chance of getting in clean in the morning with good conditions, then I pick the morning every time.

My hunt last fall for a huge main frame 10 pointer that I mentioned a few posts ago - I spooked what I think was him getting in 1/2 hour before daylight. I suspect he was hanging out in there for a while already. There was a lot of sign in the thick stuff that I was setting up in, big beds all over the place, and it reeked like mature buck. I could see 4 recent beds within 50 yards of my tree I was set up in and I was right on the downwind edge, seemed perfect for him j-hooking in. I might have tried to get in there 2 hrs earlier and still blew him out. The thing is though he was at least 100 yards from me in thick cover and there was no wind right when I was getting to the base of the tree I picked out and he took off like a freight train. He heard me, didn't smell me. If it had been windier...or maybe some rain, I might have managed to get set up clean. Or maybe I could have taken 1 step every couple minutes and made it the last 50 yards... I can dream about what might have been..... 8-)
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stash59
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Re: 2017 Season in Photos

Unread postby stash59 » Tue Jan 23, 2018 4:10 am

Just goes to show there's no set rules. Thanx Joe!
Happiness is a large gutpile!!!!!!!
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PassThrew
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Re: 2017 Season in Photos

Unread postby PassThrew » Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:40 pm

Nice Job JoeRE! You are a straight up Killer!


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